Did the modern Yellow River form at the Mid-Pleistocene transition?

We report sedimentology, geochronology, and provenance data from a drill core near the Sanmen Gorge. The results indicate that typical river channel deposits, with detritus from the Ordos Block, started to accumulate in the Sanmen Gorge at ∼1.25 Ma, which is consistent with a shift in the regional depositional environment from a closed saline lake to a fluvial-dominated system. Integrating with river terrace evidence suggest that the birth of the modern Yellow River, characterized by the square-shaped bend around the Ordos Block and flowed through the Sanmen Gorge eastward to the sea, occurred around ∼1.25 Ma.